Shit that Pissed me off – 10/25

I don’t know what bugs me more – that this dude believes that an abortion proves someone is not a fit parent or the fact that his lawyers convinced a judge he was right.

Probably the judge. Especially considering the same judge who agreed to allow evidence of the woman’s abortion also refused to allow evidence of the husband’s infidelity.

Um…what?

You see, your honor, marriage is a contract. And in this contract, he got to bang whoever he wanted and she got to be OK with that!

If having an abortion means you are an unfit mother, doesn’t it logically follow that it was a really good idea to have gotten the abortion? Therefore, since you knew enough to have the abortion, you are actually a fit parent because you recognized your own capacity to care for a child.

But this fucked up logic aside, we should note that this asshole is a CEO of a major corporation and his lawyers are really expensive. That explains why they managed to convince a judge that evidence of an abortion should be introduced into divorce proceedings but not evidence of infidelity.

So some Scouts were hiking in a state park in Utah and they decided that a balanced rock looked like it could topple at any minute.

Balanced rocks look like that, you know. Erosion makes it look like the rock is balanced so delicately that a stiff breeze could knock it over.

So, viewing the rock as a dangerous object, they decided to knock it over.

It took millions of years for erosion to make that formation. Took these idiots less than 30 seconds to knock it down.

I showed their video (yes – they made a video) to my son, who is a scout. Hey, I asked him, did they violate a scout law? Yeah, he told me. They are supposed to leave no trace.

They say that they did the right thing in the wrong way because that rock was clearly going to fall and hurt someone. If they were right (they weren’t), they still should have known better than to do it themselves.

They did the wrong thing in the right way. Their goal was to knock over the rock. They did a fantastic job of it. But they were too stupid to recognize that something can look unstable even when it’s actually not.

I can kind of understand that she didn’t want atheists to volunteer wearing T-shirts advertising that they were atheists. She runs a Christian organization, after all, and she wouldn’t want the poor to get an idea that their food came from anyone but god.

I’m a little put out when she says that atheists volunteering to serve food to poor people are a “disservice to the community.”

That’s funny because I thought that if you donated your time to serve food to poor people, you were actually serving the community.

Her bigotry (and yes it is bigotry) against people who do not believe what she believes is an embarrassment to anyone of any faith (or lack of faith) who tries to help the less fortunate.

She’s truly a kind person in the end, though, because when she learned that the atheist group would be setting up across the street to give out care packages to the same homeless people she was feeding, she had this to say:

They can set up across the street from the Soup Kitchen. They can have the devil there with them, but they better not come across the street

And every Christian I personally know just face palmed.

Now Let me Check, the Vikings are Trying to win Football Games?

Sports fan or not, you have to marvel at what the Vikings managed to accomplish on Monday night.

They lost to a team that had not won a game all year.

Not only did they lose, but their offence did not score a single point against the worst defense in the league.

A defence that, before Monday night, had allowed almost 25 points a game. This is a defense that wants to let the opposing team score. And the Vikings couldn’t make it happen. Even though they have the best running back in the league.

How do I know he’s the best running back in the league? He’s on a Wheaties box!

Their philosophy at quarterback seems to be “win a game or we’ll try the next guy.” It’s only a matter of time before they try to coax Terry Bradshaw out of retirement.

I know a lot of folks don’t care about sports. I usually don’t care that much. But when a team is this freaking bad, you have to admire the level of incompetence that got it there. This is not the work of one guy. This is a team effort.

A lot of people are working to ensure that the Vikings are this bloody awful. I think that deserves a round of applause.

Many folks really hate Obamacare. They hate it almost as much as they like the Affordable Care Act (see what I did there?)

This guy decided he’d write an essay where he posed as a doctor in training who is leaving the profession because of Obamacare. He feels that it destroys the free market and he won’t be able to make everything he feels he should make as a doctor.

Given the dude isn’t actually a doctor, he’s probably right.

But let me ask this – how many people who really want to be doctors would hang up all that time and effort because of Obamacare? And how many of them view the health care system as a free market anyway?

Let’s take me as an example. I go see a urologist a couple of times a year because I get kidney stones and that sucks. I’d rather not get them so he’s helping me work on that.

You know how much he costs?

Neither do I. Because my health insurance pays for my visits. I pay the same co-pay to his office that I pay to my general practitioner.

He’s a specialist so he probably makes more. There might be another specialist who makes less.

But I have no idea. Because all of the negotiation for fees is through my health insurance company.

The health industry is not a free market. Not the way we believe it to be anyway.

I didn’t choose my health insurance. My employer did.

Obamacare isn’t perfect. Neither is the Affordable Care Act (I did it again). But if people honestly think that it is going to destroy the free market of health care, they don’t understand the concept of a free market as much as they think they do.

Actually, the statement “Motherhood is all about nurturing children” is neither a fact or based on fact.

Motherhood is all about one thing: the ability of a female of any species to produce a child. Any female who can do that is a mother.

What you are suggesting is a woman who produces a child and then beats or sexually abuses that child is, magically, no longer a mother because she failed at nurturing.

Motherhood is all about producing children. A woman who produces a child is a mother. Period. That is fact. Your statement is opinion and until you understand the difference between opinion and fact, argument is pointless.

What about Jane Roe from Roe V. Wade? She is now a pro-choice activist and she has children. Clearly you believe she is not fit to be a mother even though she is on your side of the argument. So should we take her kids away from her? Who gets them? I assume that only women who have already had children and who have never even contemplated an abortion because they are the only people fit to raise any children at all, right?

The logic of your argument falls apart so rapidly as to be embarassing. You should be ashamed of it.

Please find a way to present a cogent argument that consists of more than “you are wrong because I say you are wrong.”

If a mother murdering her child isn’t an obvious demonstration of lack of fitness to be a mother, what do you think constitutes a lack of fitness?

I reject your premise. Abortion is not murder. It is my opinion that human life does not begin at conception and abortion is, therefore, not murder. Arguing such things is madness, however. And it is tiresome because you haven’t the slightest interest in my opinion or the scientific research I could present to back up my argument.

You are only interested in stating and re-stating your perspective. You are wasting your time but if that is how you prefer to waste it, please continue.

I’m not even sure why I wrote this response. I guess I’m OK with wasting my time as well….

Respectfully, I think he’s just a troll seeking attention. His arguments are rote, his handle is stereotypically ironic, and he never says anything new. And the funny thing is, even if he was for real, he’s not going to achieve anything with his diatribe but entrench opinions.

I’d say, let him go … let him talk to a room who ignores him.

Let him gather dust in the corner, impotent and raving, until he’s shriveled up and forgotten. Your arguments are much better suited where they always are: aimed at those who can think.

There’s no getting through to you, so this is pointless to even reply. But I can’t help but wonder what exactly you think you’re accomplishing by posting this comment?
1. You know you’re not going to change the minds of people who read this blog.
2. You don’t even try to change minds – you just popped up to be insulting.
3. Which makes you look like a real tool.
4. And proves the recurring point in this blog that Christians are pretty horrid people.

So. Logically, you had to know – didn’t you? – that by commenting you were pretty much proving the point.

Human life begins at conception because the unborn child possesses the DNA of a human being.

That DNA which identifies the unborn as human from the moment of conception is the same DNA that identifies as human, that same mature adult on the day he dies.

So it is the science of genetics that proves that human life begins at conception.

That is why atheists have moved the goal post away from science and on toward the philosophical so that they can deny both the existence of the unborn child’s Creator and the unborn child’s personhood.

Logically, though, if the science proves that human life begins at conception, then so does personhood also begin at conception.

For personhood is part and parcel of human nature, which the newly conceived human being possesses just like the acorn possessed the same nature as the mature oak tree.

So, honest question. I’m married. We don’t want children. In fact, I should not carry a fetus to term, as it would cause a dangerous instability in my brain chemistry that would lead me back into psychotic mania and possibly require further hospitalizations. Doctors won’t give me a tubal ligectomy because I’m only 35. We use birth control, but it’s not 100% effective, obviously.

If I get pregnant as a result of sex with my husband (said marital sex being a sacrament in the eyes of your god), and knowing that carrying a fetus to term would ruin our lives and possibly kill me, what precisely do you say I should be allowed to do?

I am curious about what you think about Savita Halappanavar. The is the woman who was 17 weeks pregnant (a baby that was greatly desired) and there was an unforeseen medical problem. The fetus was dying. She was in Ireland and they have rules against any medical treatment that might be considered an abortion.

The woman was in agony for days. She died.

What could she have done? The fetus was dying, just not fast enough to let her live.

Had she had a procedure that would have allowed her to live, she and her husband would have been able to try again to have a child.

You must have missed the comment where he stated that your only recourse is to never have sex since you can’t have sex to procreate.

I would also assume that since you would abort a child to save your own life, you are an unfit mother and you, therefore, should never consider adoption or foster parenting. Quite possibly, you should be legally prevented from doing so.

Don’t think I have seen your stuff trolled before. He just repeats himself again and again as if it’s an argument. AND attempts to use science in a not surprisingly selective way. I hope they have never exfoliated their skin because each skin cell has the same DNA that he is saying life starts at. I bet he is a horrific sperm killer, oh the humanity! But hey, it’s science cause I say so.

I wasn’t dumbing down your argument. You told a man that his clitoris in his vagina wasn’t him. I was mocking that.

Telling me to get a brain is incredibly rude. I have a brain, and I use it quite often. For example, I used it to explain to you that when you say “logical fallacy” you are invoking a list of actual things, none of which include “comparing apples to oranges.”

So here’s me, with my brain, dealing with your actual argument the way you expressed it to me: Your entire argument is based on a presupposition that life begins at conception. That is 100% your opinion. You base this on the fact that DNA is instantly found within a fertilized egg, and that makes it a life. I maintain that life begins when one can survive outside of the womb. I back this up with the fact that fetuses cannot survive outside the womb for months of their development; most can’t survive any earlier than 32 weeks, although there have been cases.

You also are clearly a believer, a theist, a Christian. This probably means (and I’m assuming here) you believe in the concept of a soul. I do not. Neither of us can know who is correct, and therefore it is all semantics. You believe life begins at conception because you believe in a god and souls and other spiritual and supernatural concepts. I believe life begins at first breath outside the womb because I value science and believe in neither gods nor souls. Semantics.

The bottom line of your argument is that a woman’s “nature” is to be a mother. That, too, is a supposition. I do not want children. For you to insist that my “nature” and therefore my position in this world is that of a mother solely because my body came equipped with a womb is both inflammatory and opinion. Your argument that women who have abortions are going against their very nature is offensive, misogynistic, and extremely judgmental.

There’s a part of your holy book that mentions passing judgment on others. Perhaps you should look into it. The fact that you would dare to judge the lives of those women whom you do not know, could never know, and will never know is abhorrent. That you would deign to call them murderers and criminals, unfit to care for children is unkind and not Christlike.

I am embarrassed for those who know you. I feel sorrow for the women in your life, oppressed by your misogyny. I feel shame for my Christian friends, that they must be represented on this thread by such inexcusable judgment and criticism of that which you couldn’t possibly understand.

So…you are all-knowing and omnipotent, then? I only ask because you are bandying about “universal truth” as if such truth came from you.

Look, it’s perfectly fine to believe things with all your heart. Religion is all about belief. However, you state that things are categorically true based solely on your beliefs rather than saying that they are true according to your belief system.

The only solution to abortion is to work towards a world where every woman has the right to a safe medical abortion, but because of advances in prenatal medicine because every woman has access to contraception, because no woman or girl is ever raped or molested, because every man acts responsibly, no woman or girl is ever in a position to want or need an abortion.

That’s the only solution.

If your solution involves trying to “control” women, particularly if it relies heavily on misogynistic and anti-sex shaming, particularly if it ignores or pays mere lip service to the responsibilities of males to ‘control’ themselves, then your solution to abortion will not work.

Because we’ve been there, and the present world with its set of current laws and rights resulted BECAUSE of those futile, thuggish, coercive origins. If you think returning to those origins will somehow result in a different outcome you are suffering from a delusion.

Rather than shaming women for handling a situation you can never experience in a fashion different than you fantasize you would do, work for a world where abortion is legal, safe, and unnecessary. Unless you do that, you’re simply part of the problem.

Again your premise is completely wrong. What you state is neither common sense or common knowledge. otherwise everyone would believe it as you do. Therefore I require a citation before I accept your belief regarding human nature.

My reasoning mind works just fine, thank you. You again mistake belief for fact when you assert that the only people who use their reasoning mind are people who come to the same conclusions as you.

Until you manage to understand the difference between those two fundamental concepts, further “debate” on this topic is pointless.

You are deliberately ignoring the main point for a straw man you’ve thrown together, and you’re abusing the term “murder” when neither common sense nor the national court system would agree with you.

The fact is that the ONLY solution to abortion that could possibly work is one in which they are safe, clean, and legal, but no female is ever placed in a position of having to choose one.

Instead of masturbating with self-righteousness I invite you to propose ANY other solution that eliminates abortions and can possibly work within a legal and ethical framework for every person.

This is similar to the problem of world overpopulation. In China they sought to limit growth by restricting families to two children each: the result has been a travesty and a tragedy. On the other hand, every nation that experiences improved economic conditions for the working class experiences population declines, because economically secure populations don’t feel the need to have large families to ensure their futures. So the solution to overpopulation appears to be improving the economic well-being and security of every person in the world – Japan, for example, may reduce its national population by half in the next hundred years.

Your juvenile treatment of the important topic of choice is like the Chinese government’s reactionary, totalitarian approach to population control – it won’t work, and it will make things worse. Instead grow up, get smart, and realize that making the world better for women can in fact lead to the end that you say you want – no abortions. It’s just not as viscerally satisfying to you because it’s more complex and nuanced a solution than simply hitting someone over the head with a club.

It is sad that abortion exists. I wish that every child born were healthy and wanted. However, until we fix the ills of society we will continue to have unwanted children in the orphanages and foster care system, unfortunately. This is a greater crisis in my mind. Unwanted children often become broken, soul-sick adults.

Mothers of all species are known to consume their young for many good reasons. Mothers know when to be mothers and when not to be mothers. During lean times, hard winters, being too young or already having too many to care for, or sometimes a mother is too sick or weak to care for offspring. At least humans can select to abort before the offspring is born at much less risk to the female.

While our society remains in crisis and until we can fix the ills of our planet, I commend people who choose not to have children.

It’s actually NOT sad that abortion exists, it’s sad that nature produces nonviable pregnancies, that rape exists, that incest exists, that contraceptive measures sometimes fail, and that women who are at a social power disadvantage to men are faced with a tough set of choices that most men will never have to face.

Mothers of anencephalic fetuses do not have to carry a non-viable pregnancy to term at the risk of their lives because abortion exists. Children raped by their fathers, uncles, and brothers do not have to bear their brother-sons because abortions exist. And sexually active adult women who become pregnant when they do not wish to be pregnant do not have to carry the unwanted pregnancy to term because abortion exists, leaving them more free to live their lives as they wish than the would have been before safe, legal abortion became available.

Fetuses are not babies. they are fetuses. Women are not apartment houses. Abortion is a great thing that helps bring women a step closer to enjoying all the freedom and independence that males take for granted.

Silence,
I wonder, have you ever been faced with the decision to have an abortion? Do you have a uterus? Until you do, stfu. I just love how men think they can decide what I can do with my own body and sexuality.
I have both a uterus, and had a choice to make, and let me tell you it was not a decision I made lightly. I was a Christian at the time, and that had absolutely NO factor in my decision. My son is 23 now. Yep, I kept him. I raised him virtually by myself. I kept him because I knew I could take care of him regardless of whether his dumb ass father would stick around.
Your god and your holy book offered no comfort to my terrified 17 year old self. I was not a loose woman with bad morals. I was a young lady in love.

When you grow a uterus, and have to deal with asshole men who lack honor, you can then tell me what I can do with mine.
Also, I wonder why would you come on an atheist blog and spread your venom, “logic” and hate- for no other reason than to be a troll? Sounds like a dick move to me.